On this day in 1895, Babe Ruth was born. He is generally considered the greatest baseball player of all time. I don’t think this is true. For one thing, it doesn’t make much sense to compare different positions and different times. One thing is true: Ruth was part of a revolution in the game. In the early days, the game was all about being able to finesse the ball into an empty part of the field. But then the game changed to the home run focused game it now is. It doesn’t really matter, but I do think the game was more interesting back then. But I’m not sure that with all the great advances in pitching that batters could still play in the old way. Maybe just hitting the ball as hard as possible is the only option.

Other birthdays: mathematician Scipione del Ferro (1465); duel winner Aaron Burr (1756); French portrait painter Achille Deveria (1800); French Fauvist painter Othon Friesz (1879); ideologue, racist, and big government conservative Ronald Reagan (1911); Hitler’s girlfriend Eva Braun (1912); actor Zsa Zsa Gabor (97!); actor Patrick Macnee (92!); cinematographer Haskell Wexler (92!); actor Rip Torn (83); actor Mike Farrell (75); actor Jacques Villeret (1951); independent filmmaker Robert Townsend (57); and actor Alice Eve (32).

The day, however, belongs to the great film director Francois Truffaut who was born on this day in 1932. I will admit, I’m not a huge fan of the French New Wave. It’s not that I don’t get it. I just don’t especially enjoy it—at least at this point in my life. Truffaut was first a film theorist, and this is where he can be at his most annoying. This very much seeped into his filmmaking. Nonetheless, Truffaut is probably my favorite of the New Wave directors. His first film, The 400 Blows, is the prototypical New Wave film. And it is very good. Personally, I’m more fond of Shoot the Piano Player. I don’t really like to talk about Jules and Jim, seeing as how much it has scarred me. Truffaut went to Hollywood and made Fahrenheit 451, which I think is a very weak effort. The film that most stands out to me is Day for Night, which I still really love. Here is the great “cat actor” scene:

Happy birthday Francois Truffaut!

On this day in 1895, the British character actor Nigel Bruce was born. He’s the kind of guy you see in a lot of gold age films like Rebecca. But he is mostly known for playing Dr Watson in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films. He was the person I was thinking of when I talked about how the series Sherlock was better because of the way they had updated Watson. There is something distinctly uncool now about the original conception of the character: sure, he was an old army man, but did he have to be overweight and even more obtuse than a normal person? Anyway, Bruce was great at playing that character. And I have to say, those old movies are still great.

Charles Lindbergh was born in 1902. Most people think of him as a great American hero who flew a plane across the Atlantic. I think of him as an antisemitic asshole and a Nazi sympathizer. It amazes me that what has lasted all this time is the hero and not the cautionary tale about racism in America.

Clyde Tombaugh was born in 1906. I met him in 1990, when he lectured at my school about his discovery of Pluto. He was an interesting guy. But as far as I’m concerned, Pluto should not be classified as a planet. Or if it is, then there are a couple of asteroids that ought to be considered planets. As planets go, Pluto is disappointing. What’s more, there are very possibly many other “planets” orbiting far from the sun. I’d rather just have eight set planets and call these other things something else. But I don’t particularly care, so long as we are consistent. If Pluto is a planet, then at least, Ceres is a planet.

Rock legend Alice Cooper is 66. I think he’s great. But even more important, in the 1970s, he had a great band. Here he is in 1979 doing “School’s Out” with Steve Hunter and Davey Johnstone (I couldn’t find any with Dick Wagner) on guitar, Fred Mandel on keyboard, Prakash John on bass, and Pentti Glan on drums. Pretty much the Bob Ezrin crowd. It’s great and hilarious the way Cooper always is. Enjoy:

Other birthday: playwright Pierre de Marivaux (1688); mathematician Nikolay Umov (1846); aeronautical engineer Ludwig Prandtl (1875); cubist Fernand Leger (1881); civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913); feminist writer Betty Friedan (1921); screenwriter David Newman (1937); computer scientist Ken Thompson (71); and boxer Oscar De La Hoya (41).

The day, however, belongs to George Romero who is 74 today. He was an independent filmmaker when it really meant something. And he made one of the greatest horror films ever: Night of the Living Dead. And then, in 1990, he wrote (with Tom Savini directing) a remake for the next generation. Although not important in the way that the original was, it is a perfect horror film. Every little bit from the original film that bugged me was taken out. It is a great film and I really do wish that fans would get over themselves and accept that it is a more enjoyable film than the original. Regardless, Romero has gone on to make other films, many of them quite enjoyable. But only one film revolution per director!

Here is the trailer for the remake. Really: if you haven’t seen it, do check it out. It really doesn’t get any better:

Happy birthday George Romero!

On this day in 1874, the great writer Gertrude Stein was born. Her work is difficult, but playful. I’ve often thought that she isn’t as big a literary star as, say, Joyce because she was a woman. On the other hand, her fascist sympathies doubtless don’t help. She’s still interesting to read, but I find it tiring as I do most of the avant-garde writers. You know the drill: it’s important but doesn’t really age well. But I still enjoy listening to Four Saints in Three Acts.

Norman Rockwell was born in 1894. I admire the wit of his work. He strikes me as the kind of guy parents like to keep away from their children because he would inspire them to be devilish. Of course, being a representational artists in the 20th century has tended to make people dismiss him. And now he’s seen as totally inoffensive. But I think we could use Rockwell today. Our society has become obsessed with celebrities from Justin Bieber to Jesus Christ. And yes, Rockwell was sentimental at times. But he wasn’t romantic—he celebrated actual humans—you know, people who work for a living. It’s amazing what a radical concept that’s become.

Other birthdays: composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809); newspaper editor Horace Greeley (1811); bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd (1904); actor Robert Earl Jones (1911); actor Blythe Danner (71); the least annoying The Kinks brother Dave Davies (67); actor Nathan Lane (58); situational economist Greg Mankiw (56); and actor Maura Tierney (49).

The day, however, belongs to one of the great stand-up comedians of my youth Shelley Berman who is 89 today. He was basically just a storyteller. Much of his work doesn’t especially have punchlines. He just has an amusing way of looking at the world. His buttermilk routine is more typical of his work. But here he is doing one of his classic telephone routines, which is brilliant and as funny as ever:

Happy birthday Shelley Berman!

On this day in 1887, the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein was born. He is especially known for his performances of Chopin, so here is Nocturne Opus 9, No 2:

The great film director Ernst Lubitsch was born in 1892. Despite the fact that he died at the age of only 55 of his sixth heart attack, he managed to make some of the best comedies of the 1940s. These included: The Shop Around the Corner, Heaven Can Wait, and one of my very favorites, Carole Lombard in her last film, To Be or Not to Be. Here is the beginning of the film:

John Banner was born in 1910. He was the actor in Hogan’s Heroes who played Sergeant Schultz. But if you go back to television throughout the 1950s and 1960s, you will see him here and there. He made the show work. Without him, you have Nazis on one side and the Allies on the other. And as much as identify with the Allies, all they do in the show is go around blowing up people who are mostly just caught in the middle. Schultz was the heart of the show. He is the perfect example of what I call the 95%: people who just want to live their lives.

Singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan is 46. Here is her music video for “Possession”:

Other birthdays: composer Gregor Werner (1693); philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853); William S Burroughs Version 1 (1857); novelist Colette (1873); theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874); painter Jackson Pollock (1912); puppeteer Harry Corbett (1918); musician Cash McCall (73); evil pastor Rick Warren (60); the great journalist Michael Hastings (1980); and actor Elijah Wood (33).

The day, however, belongs to writer, director, and actor Alan Alda who is 78 today. I’m not that fond of him as an actor, but he’s perfectly fine. And there is nothing noteworthy about his directing. But he really is a damned good screenwriter. He wrote some of the best episodes of M*A*S*H as well as a number of good films. The Seduction of Joe Tynan is almost creepy given many of the political scandals we’ve lived through since. I suppose nothing ever changes. The Four Seasons is a beautiful script, although it could have been a play. I still have a guilty love of Sweet Liberty. I know that in a fundamental way, the film doesn’t really work. But you do get to see Lillian Gish on film at 91. (She’s wonderful in it!) The big problem is that I don’t think Alda is really the guy to write satire; he’s seems too nice and disinclined to offend. Anyway, it’s too bad he doesn’t seem to write and direct anymore.

Happy birthday Alan Alda!

On this day in 1627, the great scientist Robert Boyle was born. He did a whole lot of stuff (hence “scientist”) but he is mostly known for Boyle’s Law. This is the observation that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume. In chemistry, we normally learn this as a subset of the ideal gas law: PV = nRT. So as you can see, this is Boyle’s Law when temperature is held constant: PV = k. Anyway, I long for the days when all of this was new and exciting and I worried about the difference between ideal and real gases.

The great mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange was born in 1736. He did many amazing things with math that I only vaguely understand. But I mostly love him because of Lagrangian mechanics. And you know me: anything that makes classical mechanics more fun is a wonderful thing. I’m just a crazy like that. Of course, it is only with Legendre’s work that it all gets crazy fun. But we’ll have to go into that later.

The great Scottish poet Robert Burns was born in 1759. I’m very fond on him to a large extent because of his political beliefs. I think they were, at base, very much like those of Thomas Paine, although I’m very aware just how broad a generalization that is regarding both men. But he was also a great lyricist. How can you not love something like “A Red, Red Rose”:

The great Etta James was born in 1938. It is hard for me to believe that she’s been dead for two years now. Here she is doing “I’d Rather Be Blind” at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1975:

Other birthdays: the great Dutch Golden Age painter Govert Flinck (1615); philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743); the great writer Somerset Maugham (1874); another great writer Virginia Woolf (1882); bluesman Sleepy John Estes (1899); the real Sybil, who almost certainly didn’t have multiple personalities, Shirley Ardell Mason (1923); and the great medium distance runner Steve Prefontaine (1951).

The day, however, belongs to Tobe Hooper who is 71 today. He is best know for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of that film. But when it came out, everyone expected great things of Hooper, because young independent horror filmmakers often go on to do great works later. Hooper, not so much. Mostly, he’s just gone on to make other horror films. And I think that’s great. Making horror films is a great thing to do. And Hooper has made some really good ones, including the megahit Poltergeist. I think he will be appreciated a lot more in 20 years than he is now (unlike Sam Raimi). I mean, after watching the following trailer for Spontaneous Combustion, how can not want to see it?

Happy birthday Tobe Hooper!

The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on this day fifty years ago. It made poll taxes illegal on the both the state and federal levels. I think it is really interesting given that the voter ID laws are exactly the same thing: a way to make voting something that must be earned instead of a right so as to disenfranchise the poor. But I feel sure that if it ever got to the Supreme Court (UPDATE: see Rick Fine’s excellent comment and links below), somehow the five conservative justices would see it in a whole different light. But you will have to forgive me. I’m sick and grumpy.

On this day in 1832, the great painter Edouard Manet was born. Although considered an impressionist, he was more the proto-impressionist. He is probably the most important artist in the move from Realism to Impressionism. I really admire his work, and I would include more details and an image if I were feeling better. Maybe I’ll update it tomorrow.

Other birthdays: big handwriting John Hancock (1737); French writer Stendhal (1783); physicist Ernst Abbe (1840); the great mathematician David Hilbert (1862); physicist Paul Langevin (1872); comedian Ernie Kovacs (1919); actor Chita Rivera (81); actor Sonny Chiba (75); actor Rutger Hauer (70); and TV’s MacGyver, Richard Dean Anderson.

The day, however, belongs to the great filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein who was born on this day in 1898. After having Griffith yesterday, I hate to give Eisenstein so little attention. He is best known for Battleship Potemkin, although he made a number of other important films. I am a great admirer of October: Ten Days That Shook the World. But my admiration isn’t with regard to it as a propaganda film. To be honest, I’ve always thought that aspect of Eisenstein’s work was over-intellectual, and I don’t think anyone really understood without having it explained. But it is an immensely powerful film, even today.

Here is one of the most famous movie scenes eve, the Odessa Steps from Battleship Potemkin. It is both amazingly suspenseful and it makes its point as clearly as one could in film:

Happy birthday Sergei Eisenstein!

Eight years ago, Evo Morales became the first indigenous president of Bolivia. He seems to have done a pretty decent job. He, of course, is largely dismissed as a socialist here in the United States. But then, so is the conservative created, free-market healthcare system we now call Obamacare. Morales, like pretty much all reasonable people, believes in a mixed-economy. You know what a mixed-economy is, don’t you? It’s the economy that the United States has always had! Wake up conservatives! Evo! Evo! Evo!

On this day in 1552 or 1554 (It was a very long labor!) Walter Raleigh was born. What, exactly was he anyway? I guess you could say that, very much like today, Raleigh was famous for being famous. It is interesting that he was put to death for political reasons. But I am mostly interested in him because of his relationship to Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe had written the poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” It is a very sweet poem that I’ve set to music. The poem was very popular, but the older Raleigh apparently thought it was childish and so wrote a response poem, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” It’s a good poem, but it is very clear why were remember Marlowe today as a great poet of that period and we remember Raleigh for throwing his coat over a mud puddle for Queen Elizabeth—a story I feel is almost certainly apocryphal.

It’s a good day for Elizabethans! Francis Bacon was born on this day in 1561. (Short labor.) He is known today as the man who helped Christopher Marlowe who actually wrote all those plays people ignorantly attribute to “The Immortal Bard of Stratford on Avon.” Woody Allen explains all this in his short story, “But Soft… Real Soft.” Read the whole thing; it is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. If you want to know about Bacon, click his name above. Basically, he was a brilliant philosopher and scientist who was not beheaded, even though he only lived as long as Raleigh. Here’s Allen with some history about Bacon that I’ll bet you didn’t know:

The great Sam Cooke was born 1931. I don’t think I really need to say anything about his work. He was a great songwriter and an unforgettable singer. His death is still a mystery. I tend to think that it was as simple as some people tried to rob him, it got out of hand and they killed him. We will never know, but his murder not only deprived him of his life, it deprived the rest of us of unknown amounts of great music. Here is the only video I could easily find of Cooke actually performing live. It is a really good version of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which Cooke later wrote the great response song, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

Other birthdays: the great French philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592); the great fetes galantes painter Nicolas Lancret (1690); the great Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788); Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849); Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin (1869); blues guitarist Blind Willie Johnson (1897); the great Russian physicist Lev Landau (1908); four great actors: Piper Laurie (82), Bill Bixby (1934), Seymour Cassel (79), and the best of the bunch, John Hurt (74); crime novelist Joseph Wambaugh (77); singer and songwriter Steve Perry (65); the great filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (61); actor Linda Blair (55); and actor Diane Lane (49).

The day, however, belongs to the most important filmmaker ever, D W Griffith, who was born on this day in 1875. Oh, how I hate talking about him. How I wish he had never made The Birth of a Nation, so that I don’t always have to talk about racism. So forget it. He seems to have been a decent man with some real confusion on matters racial and historical.

But in terms of art, Nation was revolutionary. In many ways, his next major film Intolerance was equally so. It is interesting to watch the early films—including Griffith’s—as they slowly evolve until Nation, which is shockingly modern. Quite suddenly, Griffith offers the world the full pallet of cinematic syntax. And then in Intolerance breaks altogether new ground in terms of its editing.

To start with, Intolerance takes place during four points in time spread out over thousands of years. But this is all intercut—the story is not told linearly. Then on top of that—on the microscale—we see parallel editing exactly as we see it today. Here is a very short (26 second) example. We see three different locations: the jail cell, the scaffolding, and the line cutters behind the wall on the scaffolding. Griffith cuts between them to provide the sense that they are all happening at the same time. They still teach this stuff to kids in film school, 98 years later!

Happy birthday D W Griffith!

I had gotten rather spoiled the last few days with some pretty good birthdays to choose from. In fact, the great abundance of them made me give short shrift to people I normally would have spent more time on. But that’s why I’m the best at exactly what I do.

In 1820, Joseph Wolf was born. He was a great illustrator who specialized in natural history. In fact, by the middle of his life, he was the preferred illustrator of such luminaries Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. His work is great and it makes me long for the days before photography, because of it idealized the animals. In field guides, I think that can be helpful. Regardless, check out his work.

Henri Duparc was born in 1848. He was a French composer of the late Romantic period. But we really ought to have a better name for that period, because it doesn’t sound romantic to me at all. It sounds transitional. I think you can see this in the following performance of L’Invitation au voyage, which is one of his earliest works:

Karl Wallenda was born in 1905. He was the founder of The Flying Wallendas. What I find fascinating about him is his death. At the age of 73, he was doing a wire walk across two ten story towers in Puerto Rico. But because of a screw-up in the set-up of the wire he fell to his death. I am fascinated what people think as they fall to their deaths. And I cannot read about hire wire acts without squirming, so I will move on.

Other birthdays: Revolutionary War hero and furniture maker brand name Ethan Allen (1738); Confederate general, who was only 39 when he died, Stonewall Jackson (1824); number theorist Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin (1827); co-founder and first executive director of the ACLU, Roger Nash Baldwin (1884); fashion designer Christian Dior (1905); actor Telly Savalas (1922); great actor Paul Scofield (1922); actor Steve Reeves (1926); singer-songwriter Richie Havens (1941); singer-songwriter Mac Davis (72); singer-songwriter Billy Ocean (64); sculptor Jeff Koons (59); actor Robby Benson (58); actor Geena Davis (58); and rapper Jam Master Jay (1965).

The day, however, belongs to the comedian Benny Hill who was born on this day in 1924. I know: he is probably not your favorite comedian. But there is no doubt that he was a genius. If you get past all the young models in bikinis, what you find is very well structured—and at times hilarious—comedy. The best example of this is, “Ye Old Wishing Well.” This is an example of perfect comedy writing:

Happy birthday Benny Hill!